Saturday 20 May 2023

Exning Beating the Bounds Walk

Today I joined another walk from the 2023 Suffolk Walking Festival, a Rogationtide 'Beating the Bounds' walk.

This is the description of the walk from the Festival website.

This was our route, going clockwise from our start in Exning.


Here are some of my photos.

We met at St Martin's Church, Exning, with tea and coffee laid on before we started.


Our attention was drawn to the fact that a film crew was around filming for a series to be broadcast soon on Channel 5 featuring places and happenings around Norfolk and Suffolk.


As I was early, I got a chance to talk to Adrian and Mark who created the walk, done for the first time 3 years ago. Money was being collected for Christian Aid as it was the end of Christian Aid week. It is the first time it has been part of the Suffolk Walking Festival.

We were given handouts with a map of the route and a note to explain what it was all about:

"Many years ago, when maps were rare, local people would gather to walk the parish boundaries on Ascension Day or during Rogation week. The parish priest and parochial officials with wooden sticks, 
would lead a group of local boys (as witnesses) to beat the parish  boundary markers with sticks usually birch or willow. Without maps it was important that living knowledge of the parish boundaries is 
handed down so that matters of payment of liabilities e.g., Chancel (church) repairs or the right to be 
buried within the churchyard were not disputed. Accompanying clergy would ask (Latin rogare) for 
divine blessing upon the parish lands for the ensuing harvest, and often Psalms 103 and 104 were 
recited, and the priest would say such sentences as 'Cursed is he who transgresseth the bounds or 
doles of his neighbours'.

Today we had no sticks as there are no boundary markers, but we were following the ancient boundaries of the Suffolk parishes of Exning with Landswade and St Mary's Newmarket, also walking through the parish of St. Peter's Snailwell (part of the Diocese of Ely).


Here is Mark giving us our briefing before we set off, but we left him behind to be interviewed by the film crew.

First we had to pose for the cameras (see photo at the top of the post). Many of the walkers were members of the Newmarket Joggers, who had their own group photo.


Our route had lots of long straight stretches. This was our first corner. I had though the joggers might jog away from us, but they were walking too.


We got a view Burwell - it's windmill...


...and Burwell St. Mary church, possibly the grandest church in Cambridgeshire. 


A little after 2 miles into the walk Ed from the film crew intercepted us and asked Joyce and I if we would mind being interviewed. We both said OK, but it was Joyce who got miked up...


...and filmed.


That slowed us up a bit so we were behind the rest (apart from Mark) as we came to the Landwade estate. Here we are approaching the 15th century St. Nicholas church, not a parish church but a private chapel of ease. We visited it previously on this walk to see the snowdrops in February last year.


While the others continued the walk, we took the opportunity to look inside....


...where we found our second double cadaver tomb of the week. (we saw one at Denston church on this walk yesterday).


We continued through the lovely grounds of the estate....


...and along the road to Snailwell. Our lunch stop was at  Snailwell. St. Peter's church which has one of the peculiarly East Anglian features of a round tower.


Inside we were provided with teas, coffees, fresh-baked sausage rolls and cakes...


...which we enjoyed in the sun outside.


The route was waymarked so people could go at their own pace. This marker was on the village sign.


On the next long stretch we saw plenty of butterflies.


We were now on paths followed before on this walk from Newmarket in 2018.


We crossed the A14...


...the railway...


...and the gallops.


I was reminded that when we were here before, I was challenged to come up with a cryptic crossword clue for... well see if you can work it out... "Hankers after coat, seen on boat at a distance, worth 1000 guineas, perhaps? (5, 8).

After turning along the road into Newmarket we came to St. Agnes Church, where we were provided with more tea or coffee.


It was built just over a hundred years ago by Caroline Agnes, Duchess of Montrose, a member of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in memory of her second husband, W. S. Stirling Crawfurd, Esquire.   No expense was spared in its building. The description of it in the Supplement to Cautley's Suffolk Churches speaks of 'the lavish interior embellished with a great deal of Salviati mosaic and a majolica-tiled dado', and draws attention to 'an oil painting of the Last Supper in a fine late seventeenth century frame and an elaborate marble reredos by Boehm in Renaissance-manner' depicting the Assumption of St Agnes over the Coliseum at Rome. All the windows are of stained glass and it is said to be 'the only example of the high Victorian use of such elaborate tile and mosaic work in Suffolk'. The organ, incidentally, was designed by Sir Arthur Sullivan. You can read more about the church here.


I have an Aunt Agnes and this window reminded me of my late mother-in-law, who was called Hilda.


We tarried awhile in the sun before setting out on the final stretch.


We walked straight through the centre of Newmarket....


...ending up at the statue of Queen Elizabeth.


They had some lovely flowers in the beds behind it.


As we were walking along the outside of the racecourse...


...we were overtaken by a car. It was the film crew again.


This time Ed just walked with a microphone in front of us for a short distance.

We recrossed the A14 via a tunnel.


We had our start and end point in sight now.


More tea and cakes at the finish!

A great walk! Thanks to Mark and Adrian for creating the walk, all the lovely people who did it today and those who provided us with food and drink along the way.

You can see more details of our 13.3 mile route today here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here) and more of my photos here on Flickr. I look forward to seeing what the Channel 5 documentary will show of it.

Related walks on my blog:

Oh. The answer to the crossword clue? EIGHT FURLONGS - LONGS (hankers) [after] FUR (coat) [seen on] EIGHT (boat). The 1000 guineas is a 1 mile race... run at Newmarket, of course.


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